NOVEMBER 19, 1937

We left Fort Wayne early this morning and I want to record for the information of
one of my most careful readers, that today I finished "the sweater", so I am one up
on Christmas presents!

Miss Charlotte Carr, who left New York to take the position of head of Hull House,
met us at the station in Chicago,/and in a few minutes we found ourselves in Miss
Addams' apartment. Hull House is an old house and when you begin to see the different
parts of it, you feel a little as though you were in a rabbit warren, but there is
an atmosphere about it which will seem entirely familiar to any one who has ever been
to Henry Street Settlement or Greenwich House in New York City.

In each case one great personality has created that atmosphere. Miss Jane Addams in
Hull House, Miss Lillian Wald in Henry Street, and Mrs. Mary Simkhovitch in Greenwich
House. These women have something in common, intensively individual as each one of
them , there is a spirit of self-abnegation, an ability to throw oneself completely into
the work which they are doing which is common to all.

After a luncheon at which imagine many different points of view were represented,
though not know Chicago very well, I can only give you this as an impression. I talked
to the heads of two well-known unions; heard an eminent professor express his point
of view, and sat by the head of the United Charities.

After lunch the heads of the various mothers' clubs came to extend a welcome.

Then we went through the house, meeting a number of the neighbors in both the auditoriums
and not forgetting the kitchen which had served us our very excellent lunch.

Miss Addams must have had one taste in common with Miss Lillian Wald, for I noticed
at once in the dining room a beautiful collection of brass and pewter, which could
only be duplicated in Henry Street.

We left Hull House to pay a flying visit to the Jane Addams housing project. This
is in one of the worst slum sections of Chicago and though the houses are complete,
the rents are still under discussion so nobody as yet has been able to move in. I
am again impressed with the fact that in all these housing projects a woman should
be employed to go over the plans who will do so with an eye to placing the furniture
in the rooms and then living in them afterwards. No matter how good the architects
are, this particular power to vizualize the room when lived in seems to be left out
of them.

Mrs. Dorothy Draper in New York has been giving just this kind of service in the planning
of more expensive apartments and homes, but it is much more needed in the low cost
projects, and should certainly be a woman's profession.

We stopped for a few minutes with our old frienf, Louis Ruppell at his paper, The
Times, saw Mr. Finnegan, glanced into a number of departments and caught our train
for Dubuque, Iowa.

Source Note:
Transcription created from a photocopy of a draft version of a My Day column instance
archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
My Day column draft dated November 18, 1937, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 18 November 1937, AERP, FDRL